2023 digest: favorite films, books, series, and all that

2023, you were a good one.

Is it too late for yearly favorites? We’re a month into 2024 (only a month, I hope, by the time I’ve posted this), but I don’t want to move on from 2023 without sharing the things I loved from the year in film, books, music, and television. I had some good ones from last year, ought not to waste the opportunity. 

(Also, I already made a substantial chunk when I first tried to write this. Who knows when I’ll be able to write this much again?)

Some of my favorites from 2023 are some that will probably be favorites of mine for a long time, even when we’re well past the period of yesteryear reminiscence. I also feel, somehow, that they reflect the character of the year I’ve had—but that’s a different story altogether. Maybe I’ll tell you about it some other time, or you can just try to psychoanalyze me with this.

Anyway, there’s little need for an introduction—you already know what to expect. Here are my picks for my 2023 film, book, and series favorites (with some special mentions).

FILMS

All of Us Strangers dir. Andrew Haigh (2023)

Tragedy is in the details. There have been many iterations of the slow, melancholic heartache romance story, but not many understand that what makes it work is the virtue of attention, both from the filmmaker and the audience. When you’re dealing with a narrative about loneliness, grief, and companionship, you have to pay attention. These ideas are to be handled with care.

I think the magic of All of Us Strangers lies in its stillness, those moments where your breath is louder than the audio of the cinema. This movie understands the existential weight of silence and slowness. It speaks through its moments: there’s a scene where one person gently strokes the other’s hair as he lays in a warm bath. There’s another where a son lies with his parents on the bed on Christmas night, snug in between the two people who love him most.

It is in these details of terrible kindness that make us strangers to ourselves when we lose it. Tenderness, or the desire for it, is what makes Adam’s (Scott) grief so palpable.

Strangely, this movie was also comforting, as if to say: Yes, It’s terrible. It’s terrible to love. But you do it because it is the best thing to hope for love, and to receive it. To love, and to know love, is the kindest thing you will know in this world. 

Bottoms dir. Emma Seligman (2023)

A 180-degree turn in tone with this one here. Bottoms was just… fun. Bottoms was the movie I watched with the girlies and was happy to have done so because the experience was just a lesbian-joke, fight club-satire, Charli XCX-infused ride. It is the crazy and queer 2000s teenage romcom we need in the 2020s.

This movie has everything: Ayo Edebiri, rizz-less gays, dumb football players, Ayo Edebiri, stupid teenage scheming, bloody fights, Ayo Edebiri. Also, my favorite Charli XCX track played in the final scene. You had me at Ayo Edebiri, but I’m sold even more. 

Also, Nicholas Galitzine was in this—did not expect to love that fact as much as I did after watching.

I laugh a little at writing this because honestly? I don’t know what else there is to say. And I don’t say that to mean it wasn’t substantial—the writing is really smart. Every actor was brilliant, and you could tell that they had so much fun doing this. It’s just that I don’t think there’s any need to do some heavy-duty sales pitch because my sentiment to this movie is iykyk (if you know, you know). The girls will get it. The gays will get it. That’s honestly all there is to it.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust dir. Yoshiaki Kawajiri (2000)

If I’m being honest, I don’t remember the plot of this. I can explain its basic premise: dhampir vampire hunter hunts powerful vampire lord who kidnapped an aristocrat’s daughter, but said vampire lord and said aristocrat’s daughter are actually in love. It’s an attractive logline. The story itself takes a whole philosophical angle that is actually a deeply refreshing take on the literary crisis of vampirehood and, ultimately, the human crisis of mortality.

But talking about the narrative does not capture the full picture of the movie’s magic. To know it, you have to see it.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust was a 1-hour 45-minute injection of thrill and awe. It’s a fantastic story, but what did it for me was just how it looked. The aesthetics of it—the gothic, dystopian, fantastical, steampunk tones—are brilliant. The art style is a paradise for the eyes (though of course, nothing compares to Yoshitaka Amano’s illustrations). It’s obviously of its era, which is a compliment; I think of my favorites in vintage Japanese animation like Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Perfect Blue (1997)… the aesthetic craft of these older films is just inimitable. It’s a visual treat in all the ways it can be—in color, in shape, in movement. I would tattoo this movie on my skin, if such a thing were possible. 

Special mentions

Gitling, Anatomy of a Fall, Spider-Man: Across the Universe, Asako I & II, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, Past Lives, Barbie, Senna, Isle of Dogs

BOOKS

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy 

I have a love for birds, inherited from my tita who is a passionate birder. I spent a lot of time with her from my childhood until now and witnessed firsthand the curiosity and affection that come with the act of birdwatching. I have developed a habit, either annoying or endearing, in which I tune out mid-conversation because I heard the familiar call of a shrike or a sunbird nearby. This act of attentiveness has made me love these creatures of enduring presence, always flying above me, always calling for each other, though I believe them sometimes to be calling for me.

Migrations is a novel about what happens when this presence is threatened. It is a novel about the birds. It is also a novel about the desperation that comes from the inevitable death of things—past and impending loss mark us as desperate creatures willing to make desperate journeys.

The tone of this novel is so cold, so apt for its setting, but in between its moments of frigid suspense and intensity, there are spaces for tenderness. I think this book brilliantly balances its realism of the state of the world with the kindness that comes from loving it, regardless. 

It’s an ode to life, even in the terror of the end, and an ode to the will we carry to keep going. It’s about the terns and their flight. It’s about me and you and our own migrations.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built & A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (A Monk and Robot series) by Becky Chambers

Amid existential despair, this duology was a gift. I cannot tell you enough how comforting it was to read about a monk and a robot making quiet journeys to learn about purpose. This duology—set in a utopic future where currency is moot and communities live at the gradual pace of nature—moves us to examine the speed at which we live today. Where we are is a profit-driven, incentivized-living, transactional world. Does our ability to earn equate to the worth of our life?

But here, this story says. Here’s a community. Here’s the breath of nature. Here, watch what gentleness can do to make us whole.

Self-worth and self-actualization need not be complicated challenges. “You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.” The prose in this book is so delicate and lovely, reflective of the slowness of its narrative aspirations. And it’s quite short and straightforward! As if to say, yes, that was it. That’s all there is to it.

“What do people need?” little Mosscap asks. It is probably too ambitious to hope for the answer in these two books, but you’ll read them and the world will become a little brighter and more hopeful—then, maybe you could find it. 

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

This was the last book I completed in 2023 and I could not have thought of a better one to close the year with. This was my Goodreads review for it:

I thought this book would mostly hit the part of me that is a writer — and it did, sorely, deeply, achingly, and painfully. But it also hit the parts of me that have nothing to do with being a writer, the part of me that is queer, the part of me that is grieving, the part of me that is a daughter to a mother, the part of me with profound existentialism who believes, deep inside of them, that the stories I hope to tell have fallen into a pit of self-pity and fear. The part of me that is faithless, and the part of me that cannot stomach the idea of such despair.

Power over your pain, over the world's pain, is one of the most difficult things to carry even as it heals. Power over pain is also how you can write the story — I hope whatever power Alexander Chee found to write this book finds its way to me as well.

What Chee has written is a book for the crisis of living. There is a desperation, a mourning, a decisiveness, and above all, a wisdom that permeates his words. I wish I had both his candor to parse the significance of memory and his grace to hold it despite its wounds. It is a gift to see him weave them so beautifully together.

When you are a writer you will always write about your wounds, even when you aren’t. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel tells us there is power and freedom in that, too. 

Special mentions

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Averno, The Left Hand of Darkness, Stay True, Euphoria, Just Kids, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (though probably of note: there are plagiarism allegations against this one, hmph)

SERIES

The Bear (2022 — )

Everyone will say this is good and you’ll think it’s overrated, but: it’s not. I think it can be a little unassuming if you’ve only heard of it through social media, and if you aren’t interested in the restaurant industry or would rather not touch it with a ten-foot pole, this series will just sail right over your head. Or, you might know what the series is about and feel repelled by it. Toxic, stressful kitchen environments? Petty, violent fights? Family trauma? On occasion, all of that in one episode?

Well, yes. That’s kind of what it’s about. It’s not a recommendation I give easily, especially if you’re triggered by any of those things. 

However, if you can stomach it, then let me sway you a little with my pitch: watch it for the tenderness. Watch it for the tension, and then stay for the payoff. Watch it for the moments of weakness. It’s absolutely worth it.

The intersection of passion and gentleness is connection. I thought of that in the shower as I was thinking about the series (the same day it made a sweep in the recent Emmys).

So much of my love for this show stems from its ability to go from high-stakes, burner-heat crazy to a careful, tender quiet. A Carmy testing new dishes with Syd in his apartment kind of quiet. A Marcus experimenting and creating new deserts quiet. A Richie peeling mushrooms with Olivia Colman quiet (also my favorite episode of TV maybe ever). The quiet that comes with loving food, the quiet that comes with connecting with people. If there’s anything you watch it for, watch it for that. 

(Also, check out this video essay by Nerdwriter, which partly inspired what I wrote here about the series).

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 (2023)

Jujutsu Kaisen was the second anime series I ever watched, the first being Attack on Titan. I should have known those two series as my introductory animes would imprint on my overall anime viewing taste. Though I have certainly watched (and loved) other genres ever since my baptism into it in 2021, I cannot deny my roots. I love the insane furiosity and creativity of shōnen anime. I never thought there was a little boy in me who went wild for this kind of quirky, twisted indulgence, but here we are.

I think I just generally like dark fantasy and have, as of late, tired of its Western depictions. Jujutsu Kaisen, especially this second season, was a breath of fresh air. Its insanity, its vibrance, and its tragedy just scratch some itch in me whenever I watch it; there is some secret sauce to this series, and Japanese manga-anime in general, that more than make up for the bland, repetitive, commercial quality of (most) current Western blockbusters.

They are less afraid of being unhinged. I appreciate that, and evidently, subscribe to its chaos—if not to be some rebel to commercialized narratives, then to just indulge in weirder tastes. 

And it is brilliantly animated. This season took a different style from the first, cutting detail for more movement and fluidity, and it absolutely works. Have you seen it online? There are mere 10-second clips that I fawn over. Certain sequences play in my head like a GIF unprompted. All that said though, @ Mappa: please treat your workers fairly. Damn.

Special mentions

Ted Lasso, The Last of Us, Midnight Mass, Nana (still watching!)